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SAFETY Act
 
Support Anti-terrorism by Fostering Effective Technologies Act of 2002
Special Announcements
S&T has noticed an increasing trend of applications that do not possess sufficient information for the Office of SAFETY Act Implementation (OSAI) to fully evaluate the capability and effectiveness of the technology under review. Therefore, we are issuing this reminder to all applicants and ask that you answer all questions in the application forms and provide the appropriate supporting attachments. If there is not enough information for OSAI to evaluate the technology you are applying for, your application will be deemed incomplete. OSAI will continue to assist you in preparing your application. We urge you to make use of our pre-application process prior to submitting a full application.

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BPATS for Sporting and Entertainment Venues

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) continues working on enhancing security capabilities at mass gathering venues and would like to share a compilation of best practices in anti-terrorism security (BPATS) for sporting and entertainment venues with the SAFETY Act applicant community. The DHS Science and Technology Directorate’s Offices of SAFETY Act Implementation and University Programs conceptualized a project under a DHS University Center of Excellence grant whereby the Command, Control, and Interoperability Center for Advanced Data Analysis at Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey, researched and identified BPATS for sporting and entertainment venues.

The BPATS guide provides an overview of best security practices for sporting and entertainment venues designed to assist venue owners and operators who are interested in submitting a SAFETY Act application for their venue security. The offered guide is not a requirement under any regulation or legislation that applicants must follow when preparing their SAFETY Act applications. The guide provides only recommendations, considerations, and options based on practices from  venues that hold events for Major League Baseball, National Football League, National Basketball Association, National Hockey League, Major League Soccer, US Tennis Association, National Association for Stock Car Auto Racing, and National Collegiate Athletic Association; lessons learned from the April 2013 Boston Marathon attack; and other local stakeholders (law enforcement organizations, first responder groups, and private sector groups). Not all advised protective measures will be applicable for a given venue because of the wide variety in the types of sporting facilities; and in the size, composition, and profile of particular events. Venue owners and operators should consider the full range of available resources, as well as the specific nature of the threats when responding to changes in threat condition levels.

The BPATS discussed in this report focus on areas such as risk assessment, staffing Issues (including leadership, organization and authority), information management, operations, and training and evaluation. BPATS are described in detail in the following chapters.

The offered protective measures/metrics have been incorporated into the Best Practices Matrix with the relative assignments such as suggested, recommended, or strongly recommended which can be employed in response to various threats.

 
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